1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a portable terminal apparatus for use to read information from an object of reading such as a bar code and process the information.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, to commodities dealt with in such stores as mass-sales stores, convenience stores or supermarkets, bar codes including information regarding the commodities are applied.
A manager of a store reads, using a portable terminal apparatus having a scanning function of reading a bar code, bar cord information applied to a commodity and performs information processing and so forth of the thus read bar code information to perform merchandise control or warehousing management including taking in and out of commodities in the store.
Such a portable terminal apparatus as-described above includes an optical scanner unit (optical reading unit) which performs a scanning operation to irradiate light upon a bar code and receive reflected light from the bar code to obtain bar code information, and an apparatus body which is connected to the optical scanner unit by way of a cable or the like and processes information based on bar code information obtained from the optical scanning unit.
In the portable terminal apparatus, an apparatus body usually has an inputting section such as ten keys for inputting data or an operation instruction, and an operator can perform predetermined information processing by way of manual operation of the inputting section. Meanwhile, the optical scanner unit usually includes a trigger key, and reading is started when the trigger key is depressed.
Accordingly, upon operation of the portable terminal apparatus, an operator grasps the apparatus body with one hand and grasps the optical scanner unit with the other hand, and performs manual operation of the inputting section and manual operation of the trigger key of the optical scanner unit side by side with each other. Consequently, both hands are always busy, and it is difficult to operate the apparatus body after data are collected using the optical scanner unit, and this degrades the operability of the portable terminal apparatus.
Thus, it has been proposed to develop, different from such usual portable terminal apparatus, an apparatus body and an optical scanner unit, which can be mounted integrally onto the apparatus body, separately from each other and integrate the apparatus body and the optical scanner unit with each other to facilitate operation of the apparatus body.
However, the portable terminal apparatus wherein the optical scanner unit and the apparatus body are integrated with each other so that it may additionally have a scanning function has a subject to be solved in that the operability is degraded depending upon the mounting position of the trigger key of the optical scanner unit.